Ever since the Internet boom became an Internet bust a few years
ago, the world of technology has looked a bit pallid. Amid an
overall slow economy, tech spending is down, and tech innovation
has scaled back. But that doesn't mean it's dead. We spoke
with several entrepreneurs and experts to see where the bright
lights in technology are shining. And right now, the spotlight
looks like it's reserved for Wireless with a capital
"W."

David Arfin, co-founder and CEO of GLOOLABS, a wireless
networking software start-up in Palo Alto, California, says:
"Wireless will play a substantial role. Wireless and uses of
wireless will drive a lot of innovation." The two bright areas
in this space are mobile phone technologies and Wi-Fi.

According to Isaac Ro, senior wireless analyst for research firm
Aberdeen
Group, the mobile phone handset market is staying fairly
healthy. We won't, however, see the effects of the much-hyped
3G rollouts for another couple of years.

That leaves Wi-Fi as the big mover and shaker of the moment.
Will the popularity of Wi-Fi help bring about a larger technology
revival? "Wi-Fi is something that will really enable a lot of
other IT spending," says Sandeep Singhal, co-founder and CTO
of Fort Lee, New Jersey-based ReefEdge Inc., a wireless LAN systems builder.
Some interesting developments surrounding Wi-Fi include voice over
IP applications, which are starting to catch on with growing
businesses, and new mobile technologies that let mobile phones roam
from cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks.

With Wi-Fi growing as a backbone technology, it can potentially
drag a variety of hardware sales along with it. "Even
throughout the economic slump, Wi-Fi has represented one of the
bright, shining lights of spending," says Singhal. Wireless
printers, wireless projectors and wireless adapters for just about
any piece of business hardware are working their way out into the
marketplace. And the introduction of faster and more secure
standards like 802.11g is continuing to drive growth.

With large-scale research and development projects cooling off
at the enterprise level, entrepreneurs will be a driving force
behind new technology innovations. Arfin also sees the open-source
software development community contributing in a big way. So
innovation isn't necessarily floundering; it's just become
more small-scale and is cloaked in more practical packaging when it
does reach the market.

As an example, ReefEdge puts out all-in-one "boxes"
that allow businesses to deploy and manage secure Wi-Fi solutions
easily, from the small-business to the enterprise level. GLOOLABS
is developing a way for consumers to send multimedia from computers
to home electronics systems using Wi-Fi. While these projects may
not have the glitz of an Internet IPO or the hype of the Segway
scooter, they have practical appeal and are designed to solve
real-world problems.

Trying to predict the next big thing in technology is as hard as
it would have been to predict in 1989 what today's incarnation
of the Internet would look like and how far it would reach.
"We're at a point in wireless where the next big thing is
still unknown," says Ro. Whatever happens, a tech revival
won't look at all like the boom of the late '90s.
"We're not going to return to the growth we had in 1998
and 1999. But it's not going to be dismal, and wireless is
certainly going to be one of the tent poles," says Ro.

Innovation hasn't gone away, and the role of technology in
our businesses and our lives has not diminished. It's just
gotten a little harder to recognize its face. The tech revival
won't look like a jampacked dotcom launch party; it will look
more like the GLOOLABS office-several guys with laptops, discount
store tables and an Internet connection in the middle of a
cavernous 20,000-square-foot space in Silicon Valley.